ACLU of Louisiana to honor civil rights organizer Don Hubbard

Don Hubbard, a leader of local desegregation efforts and civil
rights protests in the 1960s and later a leader of the once-powerful
SOUL political organization, will receive the 36th annual Ben Smith
Award presented by the ACLU of Louisiana.

View full sizeEliot Kamenitz, The Times-Picayune archiveThese people who worked with the Congress of Racial Equality in the 1960s were photographed in December 2008. In the top row are Claude Reese, Robert F. Collins and Don Hubbard, and in the lower row are Alice Thompson, Jean Denton-Thompson, Sandra Nixon Thomas and Doratha "Dodie" Smith-Simmons.

The award honors
individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to advancing civil
liberties in Louisiana. It is named for Ben Smith, a founder of the ACLU
of Louisiana and a civil rights lawyer who was arrested for his work to
end segregation and for participating in mixed-race gatherings.

Beginning
in the 1960s, Hubbard led efforts to desegregate New Orleans and to
combat police abuses, the ACLU announcement said. In 1963 he organized a
civil rights march on City Hall and was a key leader in activities that
led to the integration of lunch counters, restaurants, department store
fitting rooms and other public accommodations.

In the late
1960s, as a leader of a coalition including the NAACP, the ACLU, the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, several community groups and
local clergy, Hubbard helped defeat a New Orleans ordinance that would
have required a police-issued identity card and authorized police to
"stop and frisk" people without reasonable suspicion, the ACLU said.

His
activities led to numerous arrests in Louisiana and Mississippi as he
worked to advance equal rights for all, the group said.

Hubbard
now operates what is said to be the first African-American-owned
business on St. Charles Avenue, a bed and breakfast called the Hubbard
Mansion.

SOUL, based in the 9th Ward, was one of the city's
major political organizations for many years after African-Americans
first gained political clout in the late '60s and '70s, but its power
waned starting about 2000. Hubbard and former state Rep. Sherman Copelin
were its longtime leaders.